Importers and Exporters in Ghana have urged the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to improve its systems at the ports to help the Finance Ministry meet its revenue target.
According to the importers, even though government introduced some new measures at the ports –the policies failed to yield full results since its implementation faced many challenges.
Government over the past two years has pursued measures that will move the country’s port operations to a paperless system.
As at the end of September 2018, the GRA had made 22.66 billion cedis, as against their projected target of 24.46billion cedis.
By this, the authority fell short of its target by 1.8 billion cedis.
The GRA, then contracted the services of consultancy firm, McKinsey, to help it block revenue leakages.
In recent times, the GRA has blamed the country’s inability to meet the revenue target on some activities at the ports.
The Executive Member of the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana, Samuel Aggrey said the assertion by the GRA that some activities at the ports prevented government from meeting its revenue target for 2018 cannot be true.
“They are being unfair because if you look at exemptions that they give at the port, it’s about half of the import that we make in this country. The total cost is about half of the total revenue generated at the port. So why would a country like Ghana go through such problem when we know that we need the revenue,” he argued.
Mr. Aggrey maintained that it is important for GRA to examine the reason why it failed to meet its revenue targets and not blame activities at the ports.
“I will largely disagree with that assertion because importers will not be responsible for the shortfalls of revenue generation by the GRA. So they need to look at what we keep telling them and what they need to do to get the needed revenue.” He said.
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By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana.